The Hurdles of Polyrepo: It's Not All Smooth Sailing
Polyrepos come with their own set of challenges that can add complexity to your development process. Let's peel back the layers to understand these drawbacks better.
The Dependency Maze
Imagine a Polyrepo setup like a network of interconnected villages, each with its own rules and governance. Navigating between them can be tricky.
- How: Managing dependencies between distinct repositories requires extra coordination.
- Why: Changes in APIs, for instance, need to be synchronized across multiple repositories, making the process cumbersome.
Fragmented Source of Truth
Picture each Polyrepo as a separate chapter in a book, but these chapters are scattered in different volumes.
- How: There's no central hub where you can perform global operations like code search or apply policies.
- Why: This fragmentation complicates tasks that would be straightforward in a centralized setup.
The Coordination Conundrum
Imagine having to synchronize the time on multiple clocks scattered in different rooms.
- How: Making atomic changes that affect multiple projects requires orchestrating commits across various repositories.
- Why: This is more challenging than in a Monorepo, where a single commit can make global changes.
Overhead in Repo Management
Think of each new Polyrepo as opening a new bank account: each comes with its own set of paperwork and regulations.
- How: More repositories mean more overhead in terms of setup, permissions, and pipeline configurations.
- Why: The effort multiplies with each additional project, adding to the operational load.
The Duplication Dilemma
Visualize each Polyrepo as a separate kitchen. While it's nice to have multiple kitchens, you end up needing a set of utensils for each one.
- How: Common tools and configurations are duplicated across multiple repositories.
- Why: This can lead to inconsistency and additional maintenance work.